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Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

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Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#181

Post by zombiwoof »

chis wrote: post #106
paxys wrote: post #53

I don't understand why they are spending so much time and effort trying to put a positive spin on this whole for-profit thing. No one is buying it. We all know what's going on. Just say "we want to make lots of money" and move on with your lives.

I think often company spin like this is more targeted towards internal employees than the outside world. Employees on the inside are always going to have a decent percentage of “true believers” who have cognitive dissonance if they don’t believe they’re making the world better. And so companies need to provide a narrative to keep that type of employee happy.

I agree. It’s for internal employees who are probably being heavily recruited for real RSU money from Meta and Google.

Having spend the better part of my life in Silicon Valley my view has been gone are the days of mission. Everybody just wants RSU

You could tell employees they will build software to track lock up immigrants, deplete the world of natural resources, cause harm to other countries and if their RSUs go up 99% will be on board, especially if their H1b is renewed :)

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#182

Post by bilbo0s »

maeil wrote: post #147
Havoc wrote: post #35

The whole thing is a paper thin farce. Strong principled stance until the valuations got big (helped in no small measure by the principled stance)…and then backtracked it when everyone saw the riches there for the taking with a little let’s call it reframing

> Strong principled stance There had never been one. Not with Sam Altman. It was a play put on to get $100+ million in donations. This was always the goal, from day 0. This is trivially obvious considering the person Sam Altman.

This.

Anyone who thought Sam Altman wasn’t in it for the money from the start, was being naive. In the extreme. Not only Mr Altman, but most of the people giving the larger donations were hoping for a hit as well. Why is that so incredible to people? How else would you get that kind of money to fund a ludicrously speculative research based endeavor? You don’t even know if it’s possible before the research. What else could they have done?

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#184

Post by zombiwoof »

DSingularity wrote: post #127
voidfunc wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Stuff like mission statements and that kind of crap is for these type of employees who need to delude themselves that they're not just part of a profit making exercise or manufacturing weapons to suppress minorities / kill brown people. Every company has one.

I feel that Gaza has shown us that there aren’t as many of these types of employees as we think. Most people don’t care. OpenAI is doing this show because if they don’t they are more vulnerable to law-suits. They need to manufacture a narrative without this exact structure they cannot fulfill their original mission.

Agreed. The question every employee cares about is “will this make my RSU go up”

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#185

Post by aeternum »

bradleyjg wrote: post #142
jasode wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I kind of thought that was the point of the current structure. Yes, it is but if we only stopped the analysis right there , we could take pleasure in the fact that Sam Altman checkmated himself in his own blog post. "Dude, the non-profit is _supposed_ to control the profit company because that's how you formed the companies in the first place! Duh!!!" To go beyond that analysis, we have to at least entertain (not "a…

the original non-profit and profit structure was a mistake that was based on what they thought they knew at the time. (They thought they could be a "research" firm.) There’s no slavery here. If Sam decided it was a mistake to dedicate his time to a non-profit, he’s perfectly free to quit and start an entirely new organization that comports with his current vision. That would be the honorable thing to do.

>That would be the honorable thing to do.

It's also notable that this is in fact what the now vast majority of other OpenAI founders chose to do.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#187

Post by vessenes »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #89
vessenes wrote: post #72

The real news here is two-fold: new governance/recap of the for-profit, and operational shrink at the 501c3. As people here intuit, I think this makes the PBC the ‘head’ functionally. That said, I would guess that the charity will be one of the wealthiest charities in the world in short order. I am certain that the strong recommendation from advisory is to have separate, independent boards. Especially with their publ…

I would guess they’re going to put as many expenses as possible on the nonprofit. For example, all the compute used for free tiers of ChatGPT will be charged to the nonprofit despite being a massive benefit to the for-profit. They may even charge the training costs, which will be in the billions, to the nonprofit as well

Why do this? They lose a deduction that way.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#189

Post by Seattle3503 »

jefftk wrote: post #56
paxys wrote: post #53

I don't understand why they are spending so much time and effort trying to put a positive spin on this whole for-profit thing. No one is buying it. We all know what's going on. Just say "we want to make lots of money" and move on with your lives.

"We are turning our non profit into a for profit because we want to make money" isn't legal. To make this transition in a way that maximizes how much money they can make while minimizing what they lose to lawsuits they need to explain what they're doing in a positive way.

> "We are turning our non profit into a for profit because we want to make money" isn't legal.

Source? The NFL did this because they were already making a lot of money. As I understand it, the tax laws practically required the change.

Re: Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission

#190

Post by bradleyjg »

jasode wrote: post #172
bradleyjg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the original non-profit and profit structure was a mistake that was based on what they thought they knew at the time. (They thought they could be a "research" firm.) There’s no slavery here. If Sam decided it was a mistake to dedicate his time to a non-profit, he’s perfectly free to quit and start an entirely new organization that comports with his current vision. That would be the honorable thing to do.

>If Sam decided it was a mistake to dedicate his time to a non-profit, he’s perfectly free to quit [...] To be clear, I don't think Sam can do anything and come out looking "good" from a public relations standpoint. That said, Sam probably thinks he's justified because he was one of the original founders and co-chair of OpenAI -- so he feels he should have a say in pivoting it to something else. He said he got all th…

he was one of the original founders and co-chair of OpenAI -- so he feels he should have a say in pivoting it to something else

No. Non-profit is a deal between those founders and society. That he was an original founder is irrelevant. I don’t care about Elon, it’s the pivoting that’s inherently dishonorable.

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